Apple's Voice-Powered Virtual "Assistant" Coming to iOS

siri logoApple will have an extensive voice recognition service in a future version of iOS called 'Assistant', according to a report on 9to5Mac.

It has been rumored that Apple was planning to include voice-related features from its acquisition of personal assistant company Siri, and a partnership with speech-to-text specialists Nuance. Apple, however, didn't mention any such features when it first demonstrated iOS 5 at WWDC in June.

This new "Assistant" feature in iOS 5 is claimed to take voice input along with other user-specific information, such as location and contacts, to provide a powerful service to the user:

We can imagine a user asking their iPhone “Assistant” to setup a movie with one of their friends. The user might say “setup movie with Mark” and based on Mark’s contact info and the user’s location data, will be able to offer tickets to a local theater and send Mark the information.

9to5Mac notes that development of the feature is ongoing and may not be finished in-time for iOS 5, but did find mention of 'Assistant' in buried in the iOS SDK.

"ASSISTANT_ENABLE_WARNING" = "Assistant uses your voice input and other information like your contact names, song names, and location to understand your requests. This data will be sent to Apple to process your request and to improve Apple products and services."


The feature sounds just like what Siri had been working on prior to its acquisition. Their iOS app Siri Assistant remains available on the App Store for download. Siri focused on a concept called "Virtual Personal Assistants" (VPAs) that would accomplish tasks for the user.

Virtual Personal Assistants (VPAs) represent the next generation interaction paradigm for the Internet. In today's paradigm, we follow links on search results. With a VPA, we interact by having a conversation. We tell the assistant what we want to do, and it applies multiple services and information sources to help accomplish our task. Like a real assistant, a VPA is personal; it uses information about an individual's preferences and interaction history to help solve specific tasks, and it gets better with experience.

Siri's implementation used Nuance's voice recognition engine to translate spoken requests to text which would then be processed. Apple has been rumored to be working closely with Nuance to provide the same transcription service to iOS users.

Popular Stories

New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 18

10 New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 18.2

Thursday October 31, 2024 9:42 am PDT by
Apple is set to release iOS 18.2 in December, bringing the second round of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update brings several major advancements to Apple's AI integration, including completely new image generation tools and a range of Visual Intelligence-based enhancements. There are a handful of new non-AI related feature controls incoming as well. ...
Apple MacBook Pro M4 Cinema 4D Slack Finder Xcode 1

Apple Announces MacBook Pro Models With M4 Pro and M4 Max Chips, Thunderbolt 5 Support, and More

Wednesday October 30, 2024 8:01 am PDT by
Apple today announced new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models featuring M4 Pro and M4 Max chips, alongside a new entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro powered by the M4 chip. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. The new M4 Pro and M4 Max machines come with a minimum of 24GB of Unified Memory as standard, up from 18GB in the previous models. Both models feature three...
M4 Pro on Blue

M4 Pro Chip Benchmark Results Reveal an Extremely Impressive Performance Feat

Thursday October 31, 2024 7:06 pm PDT by
The first Geekbench 6 benchmark results for the M4 Pro chip surfaced today. Impressively, the results that are available so far show that the highest-end M4 Pro chip is faster than the highest-end M2 Ultra chip in terms of peak multi-core CPU performance. Here is a comparison of the results: Mac mini with M4 Pro (14-core CPU): 22,094 multi-core score (average of 11 results) Mac Studio...
m3 macbook air blue

Apple Announces MacBook Air Now Starts With Increased 16GB of RAM With No Price Increase

Wednesday October 30, 2024 8:04 am PDT by
Apple today in its new MacBook Pro press release announced that the MacBook Air lineup now starts with 16GB of RAM, up from 8GB previously. This change applies to the 13-inch model with the M2 chip, the 13-inch model with the M3 chip, and the 15-inch model with the M3 chip. In the U.S., the MacBook Air lineup continues to start at $999, so there is no price increase associated with the...
maxresdefault

Apple Announces Redesigned Mac Mini With M4 and M4 Pro Chips, Two Front USB-C Ports, and More

Tuesday October 29, 2024 8:01 am PDT by
Apple today announced fully redesigned Mac mini models featuring the M4 and M4 Pro chips, a considerably smaller casing, two front-facing USB-C ports, Thunderbolt 5 connectivity, and more. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. The product refresh marks the first time the Mac mini has been redesigned in over a decade. The enclosure now measures just five by five inches...
M4 M4 Pro vs M4 Max Feature

Apple Announcements Recap: M4 iMac, Mac Mini, and MacBook Pro

Wednesday October 30, 2024 9:24 am PDT by
Apple this week made three key Mac product announcements: new iMac, Mac mini, and MacBook Pro models. These machines bring the M4 chip series to Apple's Mac lineup for the first time, but each in its own way offers several new features and changes that go beyond processors. Below, we've compiled a recap of all the highlights. New iMac Apple on Monday announced its latest 24-inch iMac,...

Top Rated Comments

mattkowalski Avatar
173 months ago
Hope it's a big improvement on the current voice recognition...

Me: Play song by [band name].

Phone: Dialing [ex-girlfriend's name].

...not helpful while driving!
Score: 17 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Blakjack Avatar
173 months ago
This better be fully baked in time for the iOS 5 release. Android is way ahead when it comes to voice commands.

Not to be rude, but Android voice commands are half baked. What's the point if it works only sometimes?
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
rdlink Avatar
173 months ago
Hope it's a big improvement on the current voice recognition...

Me: Play song by [band name].

Phone: Dialing [ex-girlfriend's name].

...not helpful while driving!


lol

But a bit of advice: Get your ex-girlfriend out of your address book, lest you soon to be ex goes snooping...
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
TNTN Avatar
173 months ago
And I'm sure it'll join Voice Control as one of my never-used features.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
AngerDanger Avatar
173 months ago
the voice command thing i will belive a good one when i see it. I used the androind one up to revision 2.3 and it was severaly half baked at best. I hope apple wates gets it right and comes out ahead. I can see this being the ios 5.5 mid revision add on with ipad 3 and LTE iphone. The now you can just talk to it and it will do what you want no more typing why type when you can talk is what steve will say

Tend to understand Yoda-talk, even the smartest of phones do not. Maybe that's why you haven't seen a good voice command system yet. :D
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Elrond39 Avatar
173 months ago
It seems to me like we're getting pretty close to a Hitchhiker's-Guide-in-your-pocket scenario... Now's the time to start planning/designing "Don't Panic" cases for future iPhones. ;)
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)